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Coming up, part 2 of the NBA Sunday pod with Racela and special guest, Brian Curtis next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where I have a new rewatchable. It's coming for you on Monday. We did Slapshot, one of the best sports movies of all time. Eventually, you'll be able to watch that on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well. Hey, FanDuel Sportsbook. I'm doing a boost because there's a big profit boost token on Wednesday. 30% if you hit your bet. I am going to, I think on Tuesday, tell you what I want to do for a finals boost bet. We hit the last one in the Western Conference Finals of Game 5, Luka and the Mav. I'm going to try to keep the streak going. Stay tuned for that on Tuesday. I'll tweet out whatever the boost is eventually. There you go. Coming up on this podcast, Raseel and I brought in special guest Brian Curtis, a sports media expert, Editor Large of the Ringer. We're going to talk all the media story lines floating around the NBA Finals. Very A peculiar year for media storylines in the Finals. We're getting into it.
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First, our friends from ProJip.
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All right, for part two, joining us, we're going to bring our editor-at-large, Brian Curtis. He's three levels above being veteran journalist, Brian Curtis. When you're a veteran, it feels like vaguely insulting, right? Like, veteran, play-by-play guy, so-and-so. It's like a mild insult, right?
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It means something really bad is about to happen to you at work.
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That's what it is. Okay. And Rassila is here. Rassila, a giant Brian Curtis fan. I know this is an exciting hour for you.
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Oh, my God. Look at all of those books.
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Oh, yeah. Brian Curtis has a lot of books behind him.
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He read all those books? Yeah, that's the first question. Best moment ever, I had Joe Buck on the press box, and he's looking at him, he goes, Oh, yeah, where's my book? And I go, It's right there in alphabetical order next to your dad's. And there was this moment of, Oh, okay.
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Yeah, you showed him.
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Yeah, that's the all-timer right there.
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Got both books.
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Hey, Curtis, we were talking in part one about media narratives and glass half full, glass half empty type of stuff that's What's going on. Dallas is in the glass half full zone with media takes, right? Because everybody's so excited for the Luca piece of it and the Kyrie rehabilitation/resurgence. The Celtics are in the glass half empty zone of, I know these guys' records, but... And there's like, Yeah, But do you feel like this whole cycle happens faster than it used to happen? Is this instantaneously in 12 hours, all of a sudden the glass half full, glass half empty happens?
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It's probably generally true, though. I think the Celtics part of it has lasted basically throughout the playouts because there's just not that much to say.
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Yeah, that's a good point.
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What was your storyline after the Pacers lost game one and the series looked like it was going to be really fun for about five minutes? What else was there to say? Then Halliburton gets hurt. The only take right there is to start to just poke at the Celtics. These guys aren't that good. They haven't played anybody. Stars keep getting hurt. I think it's almost out of boredom, if anything else.
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Yeah, we're still at... Chris Ryan mentioned to me, he was like, It seems like you haven't had as much fun talking basketball during the playoffs as you did during the football season. I was like, Well, I was ready to have fun, but I don't... I mean, the East was pretty awful. Right? Even the Knicks series, which seemed like it was super fun. Then by the time we got to game seven, the Knicks are running on fumes and ESPN is doing the Steven A show, basically, for the final game. It was like, This isn't fun at all. West was a little It was more fun, and then it flamed out. But I would say if we were going to rank the playoffs, would you rank this on the lower end, Rizelda, since we started doing this?
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Oh, yeah. I mean, no question. My favorite series other than the Minnesota Denver is New York, Philly. I mean, I love that series.
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Round one.
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Loved it. And OKC Dallas is there. As far as entertainment, we had close games with Dallas and Minnesota, but it just, I think, was like, oh, Minnesota is just not ready for this the entire time. But It also speaks to the Boston part of it. When the season started, hey, who has the most on the line now? And it's Boston. Which team, if they don't win a title, feels like it's a disappointing season. Now, I think there's an absurd version of that where because I was back in Boston listening to a lot of the local coverage, it's like, if they don't win, well, what if they lose game seven at home and Donchitz finds a way to get six points in the last minute and a half? You start sitting there going up. This team's super disappointing again. Of course, there's a losing scenario where you'd feel like Boston doesn't have to start questioning itself, their identity as an organization. But there's so much at stake for them because they've been lingering here now for such a long time that there was no way to enjoy it, especially once Butler, Mitchell, and Halliburton were gone.
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So I'm not surprised at all.
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And they've spent a crazy amount of money on it, and a lot of things have broken their way. Yeah. Like Curtis, we should mention you're from the great state of Texas. You followed this Mavs team. I did. If Dallas doesn't win the finals, I don't feel like it... I don't feel like the ramifications would be the same as the Celtics blowing this and Dallas becoming the third biggest underdog since the merger in the NBA Finals to win a title and to come down from having lost 30 games in the regular. All these beats, it would be a really bad loss for the Celtics. For the Mavs, they'd be like, Hey, man, Luka, it's coming. It's going to happen. I think you quickly move forward. But how's How's the city of Dallas treating this team?
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It's been so funny because end of last year, and I still consider myself culturally a citizen of Dallas Fort Worth and the same way you guys do, Boston. I listen to sports radio down there all the time. End of last year, everybody's pissed off about the tanking. End of last season, everybody wants Jason Kidd fired. I was listening to the Dallas radio coverage of the draft this year. Everybody pissed off when they took Derek Lively. Five points a game at Duke, five rebounds. That's what we want. I mean, that was not a happy day of radio at all. And even till March, when they put Lively on the bench, put Gaffer in the starting lineup, put Jones in the starting lineup, the Mavericks goes 16-2, everybody just really perked up. So it's not only a happy to be there finals, there was just... Again, this does not stretch back at all. This is the opposite of what Ryan's talking about with Boston. Really, just since March has it been like, maybe there's something there in this team.
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Yeah, it's like the happy surprise NBA Finals team, which we don't get that often because all we do is talk basketball every day.
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I don't want to hear about anybody on coaches until they can once tell me they like this coach who they think is really good on the 30-win team. Like, this guy's a really good coach. They won 30 games. But now it's gone the other way where no one thought Kidd was any good. It's strictly about the fact the story keeps being told over and over again on all the playoff games. He talks to the players, not as a coach, but as a player. He tells them what he would do if he played, not what they should do. His time before the timeout that you lose automatically, people are acting like... He's f*cking sitting there saying, I think this world, there's more going on than just a flat line on the horizon. It may be spinning. We could be on something that shaped different. I love... Announcers love a couple of things, and I'm well-versed in this.
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Well, they love a good time out the most. A good time out is just catnip for them.
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But not losing the time out. Everybody knows you're going to lose. If you call that before you lose it, f*cking brilliant. Yeah. Unbelievable. And then the other thing they love from players is when there's, say, 14 left and the shot clock is off and a guy got a really good look at the hoop, and he goes, Let me peel out here and waste time, run the clock, and get a way worse look. Announcers f*cking love that. They're smart. They didn't want to give the other team a possession, and he took an awful shot as opposed to the wide-open one. Brilliant.
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Well, the cousin of that is the two for one, where somebody will jack up a 29-footer with a hand in his face with 29 seconds left on the clock. Two for one, it's fine. It's good.
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It's good.
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It's like a 29- It sets up a half-court shot with 24 seconds from now.
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You took one of the worst shots of the game at 29 seconds, the reality is if they take a shot with three or four left in the shot clock, by the time you corral the rebound, you have four seconds. The two for one, there needs to be... Now, Brian's like, Am I supposed to be on this podcast? There needs to be an understanding that it has to be over a certain number left in the quarter. Guys are like two seconds north of the shot clock going up two for one.
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Yeah, but there's 40 seconds left. It makes sense. 29 seconds left, maybe not as much sense.
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I think 35 is maybe the cutoff.
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Yeah, 35 sounds great. Curtis, we knew this would go in a bunch of different directions, but the announcing during the playoffs, the studio stuff in the playoffs, the The discourse we get on TV now versus the discourse we get on podcasts that are so much more hardcore and day to day. Can TV keep up anymore? And where are we going with this going forward?
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I thought you were setting me up for JJ on Felger and Maz question.
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I didn't hear that. So that got gnarly, right?
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You traveled around a tad. But what you're talking about, these two different worlds colliding, which is a fascinating thing to me about where we are right now. The NFL, it's really pronounced because NFL studio shows still feel like the 1994 studio show that I flipped on at home and when I had to go turn on the TV, Phil Sims. God bless Phil Sims. Sayonara. It's been a great run. But he was still doing Phil Sims on television. And the NBA shows, you could argue, maybe there's a little more there and inside the NBA, which I'm sure we're going to talk about as its own weather system. But we're just in this funny moment where you just have a completely different conversation about basketball. In one form versus the other.
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Well, then the game telecasts feel different in some ways, too, because it just feels like we're between these two worlds where you can hear it with the JJ Doris, Green telecasts, where they're trying to be really sophisticated at certain times, right? And they're trying to throw numbers at us and strategy and stuff that's a little closer to the JJ side. But then there'll be somebody goes up by 20, and then It's like, you know what I needed here was being Gunde just babbling about some story in the '99' at Nix and some guys having a good time and it feeling like they're hanging out and having a podcast. And it's that balance. It feels like on TV, the balance They're really having a trouble trying to figure out what that balance is. Because on the one hand, what's your servant when you're doing these daily TV shows? It's like the video clip. Was there a good headline? Did you grab people with that two minutes? It's Mike Greenberg showing the shot of Jason Tatum. Was he happy for Jalen Brown when he got the Finals MVP? I don't know. What did you think? And now we start going around the circle.
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So they're doing that stuff. But then they're also trying to educate you about basketball. Are you happy with this stuff at this point, Rasillo? Where are you?
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I know it's not for me. And I've learned this lesson over the last few years that I think the drama... Look, I'll actually defend first take here. The clip that made the rounds was during the playoffs, and then everybody screen grabbed it. Could Steven A score a point against LeBron James one-on-one? All right. How long is first take? Is it two hours? Is it three hours?
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They're having fun with that.
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Yeah. Okay, right. The point is, it's a really easy target to go, Oh, look at these guys, and there's all these other amazing stories, and it makes it rounds. There's also a lot of just... I know I used to have it, too, where I'd watch certain shows and being like, it's amazing to think I'm not allowed to be on that show because I don't fit into a perfect cookie cutter deal. And it was something I had an issue with for a long time, probably too long. I remember Dan Patrick saying to me, What's wrong with you? Why do you think you would be on that? If you don't angle to be an anchor and host these shows, you're never going to be on those shows. You're basically an idiot for thinking that you can be on it, even though I think the rules of that have been stretched quite a bit with people, nontraditional backgrounds being on opinion shows, covering some of the major sports. They need more bodies. Right. I no longer care about it now. I've gotten over that part of it. When I watch those shows, I know that they're not necessarily for me, but I really think that we get the media coverage and we get the shows that we actually want, and no one wants to admit that we click on the dumb sh*t.
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If I were being totally transparent of like, I can't believe I clicked on this story, but it was a well-crafted headline. It was a little vague. I had to know the f*cking answer. I had to know if Mori had the results and that guy was the dad. Inherently, I think we all, as educated as you may find yourself, as you age and try to angle your interest in a more refined things, sometimes we still want to know if that guy's the f*cking dad. That's a lot of the sports coverage, and I think it's okay. The reason this is programmed that way is because that's what we want, whether it's the broadcast teams, whether it's the big names of the guy that just retired, because if you don't know who that person is, you're like, Who's that that guy. And that's how they program these things. And it's also the way they still structure. We could go over all these different topics and questions and be like, That show's stupid, or this is a dumb question, whatever. I think the audience actually always wants this stuff. And I've come to that epiphany years ago, and I repeat it probably too often.
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To me, what's even more interesting is the way they've gone the opposite direction. So when you're watching ESPN's number one team, and JJ Redick is really trying to get some Xs and O's basketball into a telecast, which, by the way, is a really hard in a basketball game because you don't have much time to talk, and really, really hard when you have a three-person booth and there's not enough time, really, for either analyst to get their stuff in there. He's like, That's a peel screen. I'm sitting there, somebody who loves basketball but doesn't engage with it like you guys do, going, so peel screen, Google, let me figure out what that is real quick. And again, that's about, and he's a newishouncer. So Greg Olson do a little bit of this when he first started, and then he started like, you know what? I'm going to give you the Xs and O's, but I'm just actually going to throw away all the terminology and explain to you what happened on a play. We don't need terms that doesn't really help anybody here. People that know what a peel screen is are going to recognize it anyway.
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Let's just do terminology here. But they've tried to go the other way, it feels like a a little bit on that main ESB intelligence.
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You know, the Greg Olson thing is an interesting comparison because I remember that first year, you wrote about it after the fact you wrote a really good piece about Olson, how he figured out, he almost had too much information.
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Yes.
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And he had to figure out every play, I have five things to say, let me just figure out. This is the whole consider your piece. Let me just figure out the best of these five things, and that's what I'll say. I do feel a little about that with JJ because obviously, he's an incredibly smart basketball guy, and you can hear in the pod. But when you're doing the TV and the games, and you're trying to also appeal to people who are casual fans or fair-weather fans, and how do you shove the basketball down their throat without shoving it down their throat? I guess my question with basketball is, when it's flying back and forth like that, how much do we need? It's almost like the summer off style. Is it better to have a little less? I don't really know what I want. I know I haven't been completely happy with a broadcast in a while, and I don't really know what I want from it, Rosillo. I guess because I'm watching the game, they have all these alt-casts. I could just tell you I've never watched an all cast for basketball ever. I'm just not interested.
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I want to hear the announcers, and I want to hear the crowd, and I don't really want to be entertained by these people. I actually want to watch the game, but I'm sure there's an audience for that stuff, too. What do you want from it? Man, that's a tough answer because I think JJ is at his best when he's pointing out what he feels.
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There are certain moments, I'd say in some of the Celtics games against the Pacers, he's like, Okay, it is noticeable that the defensive energy is cranked up here, and he's right there, and he's watching it. It's such a simple thing. But I don't know that that many color people are that good at pointing that out immediately. They may see a block and play the results of, Oh, the defensive intensity, but it was just the activity, the movement, fighting over screens, contesting more. He was 100% right. It wasn't like he was seeing it and it wasn't happening. But then I think it's really tough because it's their first year together with this group. Whatever you thought previous regime with Van Gundi and Jackson and Breen, they'd been around for so long that they knew each other's beats really well. I actually liked it when it got a little topical. I like when there's a slow moment in a game where it can be- They start just talking about sh*t. Hey, what's going on? I actually maybe it's because of the podcasting thing with me. I liked it. When people say, Oh, great, Saturday Night's Game turns into a podcast again.
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Well, if the game sucks, great. I was into I was watching the UFC last night. So Anik, Rogan, DC, they are so good. I like them, too. But the sport allows you to have these moments where Strickland is feeling himself out, feeling out the opponent. So there's not constant action. And yet they're talking about Costa and just where he's at in his career. And you're getting all this awesome backstory and then making that part of the observation the actual call of the fight. And then these peak energy moments when the action is being matched by how the announcement is. I was thinking to myself, I'm like, this is a brilliant broadcast of these fights. And these three guys are so good. But I also think the sport allows it a little bit more. We're at Brian's point on the basketball, there's probably no perfect formula, but you can always tell, Brian, when somebody shows up with way too much prep. When that happens, it's usually newer people that want to prove their worth. The most Most important thing you can ever learn in the broadcasting is somebody who had to do play by play 20 something years ago.
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Way too much prep, talked way too much, wasn't secure, trying to prove myself. And even somebody who has a 10 year career in the NBA, the first time they get that position, you can tell when it's like, okay, it's just not comfortable and they're trying to prove that they belong here. Or then you have the other side of the guy that's like, you want me to do prep? I just played like, I don't need to.
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What you said about the UFC thing, I think that's such a good point. I think those guys are great together. And in the Strickland-Costa fight last night, Rogan was on it early. He was like, I don't like this pace for him. He's moving backwards. Strickland, he's He's moving forward. He's making him spend a lot of energy. And I don't think Costa is ready for this. I think by the fourth, fifth rounds, then they start talking about, did he make a mistake making this fight five rounds instead of three? They were having all these conversations, and Strickland hadn't even really taken hold of the fight yet. Then when it started happening in the third and fourth round, because I was watching with my son, and my son was like, this is the right conversation. I don't think Costa... I don't know why he didn't do three rounds, and they were just tapping in his sh*t. The point is with basketball, Brian, it's so back and forth and so fast. It would be really hard to explore the studio space like that.
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Yeah, it's funny, and I know I'm preaching the choir here, Bill, but it's really weird that we've decided that every major basketball game in the United States needs three announcers. These are all good announcers, so I'm not killing anybody here. But Turner, three announcers for the conference finals. Espn, three announcers for all the big games. The final four or three announcers. There's just not that much time. And again, it's not a shot at anybody so much. It's just like you have this tiny window where you can talk about something. It's a play by play announcement sport. So when you have two analysts and they're both trying to get their stuff in there. And then inevitably, they start talking to each other. One of them makes a point, the other person says, I agree. And I'm like, Okay, thanks. Wanted to know what the other person thought of that point as we swing down the court the other way. It's too crowded to me. It just is absolutely too crowded.
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There's also something else I've noticed with Doris is that she wants to be so respectful of JJ because of his career and that he just finished up playing, and he's still very connected to so many players, that it's almost like she doesn't want JJ to feel that she's getting in her way. But then in a way, it's almost f*cking her up a little bit. I don't know if... It's not even about her ability, because we know how great she can be, but I think it's tough to be like, Hey, new group, finals, figure it out. She's doing something that's actually-Not a ton of reps. Yeah, it's commendable because I think she's being incredibly gracious to JJ, but she's not getting to be the best version of herself because I think she wants him to flourish. That's what I've noticed.
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I want to do more three-man stuff because I think it's a good topic, but we're going to take a break. I remember writing about this. With the first one, I had my digital city, Boston column. One of those finals, Doug Collins was doing the games, and then they added Isaiah. I think it was Isaiah or Magic. It was one of them.
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It started with Isaiah, then they hired Doug Collins, I because of it was just I said.
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Yeah, that's right. It was the three of them.
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And one of the tips- I love that he knew that immediately.
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One of the tips you can look at when you know the threesome hasn't clicked is they'll come out of timeouts or even when they're talking and they'll say each other's names to try to make it seem like their ball's moving around. Brian, that's what has to happen when you're protecting the rim. That's right, Bill. That is what has to happen. Then they go and it's just like, Oh, this How is it working? Look, I thought Van Gody and Jackson and Breen, they went sideways a little bit for me the last couple of years, but mainly because Jackson was out of the league too long. I like hearing at least one person on the asked who's either coached or played against the guys that I'm watching within the last couple of years because I think that's the biggest asset. But one of the things that was good about them was it really sounded like those guys went to dinner together, they hung out together, they might They're doing their vacation together. Then when they're doing the game, you felt that camaraderie and that chemistry. I do think that's important. It's a really hard thing to build, and it's a really hard thing to build in four or five months.
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Especially, I've announced a couple of NBA games, and it goes so much faster than you realize. It's like, Oh, my God, we're at the seven-minute time out. I've made two points. So when you have a third person there, it's just flying by. And then they're talking in your ear, and it's really choppy and weird. So you got to rely on that chemistry. But Brian, your original point, I don't know why it's not just two people. I don't know how we got to three. I don't know who made the decision. I don't know when people looked at each other. Even TNT in the conference finals, they're like, Steve Van Gunne, Reggie Miller, they've never worked together all year. These are our guys, and they're with Kevin Harland. It's like, just pick one. Why not?
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They did it last year, too. It was the same thing. And by the way, as people have looked at the new crews, I've seen some strange new respect for Mark Jackson coming up in a few places. Come back. Hey, we had some issues with Mark Jackson, but I'm like, I'm sorry. I'm out. I'm all good. Thank you very much for going to that one. We're fine.
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I don't know that we've ever had this depth of play-by-play guys. It's unbelievable how many play-by-play guys across all sports and all networks where I go, This is a loaded era. Better than the '90s?
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No, it's a little like what happened with the NBA where the older guys are still really good, but then this new crop of dudes came in. They said, MBC for the Olympics is going to have Noah Eagle and Dwyane Wade, just the two of them. I'm like, That sounds great. Noah Eagle, Dwyane Wade, no third person that we're awkwardly pushing in in some way. They'll just call the game. The games will have certain flows. But this goes back to a topic that we've talked about over and over again. I don't know why TV producers and the people to oversee this stuff, can't stay out of their own way sometimes. We saw this with Inside the NBA, and Russell and I talked about it last week where it's just like, we just were doing this victory lap of what an awesome show this has been for us for 20 plus years. Then over and over again, they have to put a fifth guy in when the stakes get bigger. This happened with the ESPN's women's basketball team during the college tournament. Everyone was like, this three-person team they have is great. It was really jumped out.
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It was like, this is awesome. Then when we got the final four, what happens? All of a sudden, it's a five-person thing. It's like these guys, they can't help themselves, the people that oversee it. It's like they almost want to feel like they did something. Their boss is like, What are we doing for the final four? We're going to add Dawn Staley. Great. That sounds good. It's like, You know what? You had a really good team already. Why did they do this, Curtis?
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It's really strange. And the thing I hate about it, I think I saw this. It had definitely happened with Draymon. I heard you guys talking about this, but also with CP3 on ESPN. 10, which is everything then has to be about the new guy. So they're going to like, Hey, Chris, when you were playing-I liked it with Chris, but yeah, keep going.
[00:26:38]
Chris was good.
[00:26:39]
When you were playing in the playoffs and you were in a high leverage situation, when you were feeling pressure, first of all, I was like, Who wrote this question? Thank you very much. But everything is then about his playoff career. And I'm like, you're an interesting guy. I want to hear you talk. That's cool. But this is not about you right now. We've actually got really, really big basketball in front of us, and the conversation should be about that. And I hate when that happens. In addition to, as you see, a producer getting away and just needing to add something for the most important basketball games of the year that we didn't need, then it always becomes about the new guy because they start asking him about his career, and I was like, I don't want this.
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The five-person studio show, we just have 50 plus years of evidence that it fails. It fails for the same reason. I just did a podcast. I don't want to step on for rewatchables where we talked about the power of foursomes and four and four people when you go to dinner. Four people is always the best number. Four people is always the best number for a studio show. There's just certain things where golf, foursome is much better than playing with three people. Then one person is by themselves in a car heart. The four just works, and I don't know why they would mess with that as the stakes get bigger and the audience gets bigger. That's when they add the fifth person. I actually wanted to hear from Chris Paul. It was interesting. But at that point, you just I have to bump one of the people on the show. Just pick one. Somebody's got to go. What were you going to say, Rizillo?
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Well, I have specific Curtis questions on just understanding some of this stuff in that we keep seeing these obits for inside the NBA, and it's coming back next year.
[00:28:23]
It's true.
[00:28:25]
We think. Why don't you two guys talk this out? Because I don't know.
[00:28:32]
We have another year left on the NBA rights deal.
[00:28:36]
Technically, we do. Yes.
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Yeah. So the plan is that that will be on Turner next year.
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But.
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Okay.
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What was the time? What was it? College football? What was the one where they lost it? And then the people just said with a year left to go, f*ck it, just take it now.
[00:28:54]
Thursday Night Football went from Fox to Amazon a year early. That might be what you're talking about.
[00:28:58]
Yes, that's what it I'm prepared for anything because it's, to me, so crazy that Warner didn't keep the NBA to begin with and watching them for the last month pretend that they're still in this. Well, we have the right to match. It's like, this was done a month ago. This is where I went on the town and we did the whole thing. This was done. They lost it. Now the reporting that's come out since about, I think, Lucas Shah was the first one to report. The NBA was like, Give us two, three, and you have it during the exclusive period. Warner was like, Nope, two, one. You're taking games away from us. They're like, Okay, cool. They left and immediately got two, five per year from NBC, and that's it. They're going to lose it. When I think how badly that was botched, I just like, Would it surprise me if they're like, f*ck it. Take this off our hands a year early and we'll redistribute the money somewhere else and go after UFC or whatever? I'm prepared for anything. The lame duck season for coaching, for TV properties, it always gets a little weird.
[00:30:00]
I'm not rolling it out is my point.
[00:30:04]
I hear you. It is cheaper this year than the money we're talking about. I mean, it's significantly cheaper. So they have a cheap year, just like CBS just did with the SEC. Also, if your existential fear at Turner is that cable operators are going to be like, Hey, we don't need you anymore because there's nothing on your network. Why would you want to speed up that process? Surely you'd want to give yourself an extra year of cover while you figure out what are we going to put on TNT to make sure this is still a viable cable network, at least as viable as any cable network.
[00:30:31]
What if you could get twice as much money than what you're paying to get rid of it a year early?
[00:30:35]
Maybe your company has a lot of debt like Warner Brothers does. Wait, is this Media Reporter Bill, the one that broke the news about Turner being out? Because I want to know who I'm talking to here.
[00:30:46]
No, it's not me to report it, Bill. This is just, I'm prepared for anything, though.
[00:30:49]
Great question by a reporter, though. Great job by Brian.
[00:30:52]
No, this is, I'm prepared for anything, Bill, because when it came out that for two, three, they could have locked down the NBA and they just decided not to. That makes me think you are making decisions solely for money at this point. If you're making a decision solely for money, would you pedal off the last year of your deal for twice as much to MBC and just say, take this year early, give us money? Okay, I have another follow. It's not Out of the realm for me.
[00:31:16]
Okay, so when Skipper did the decade-long deal for the rights in the midteens, it was immediately met with, are you out of your mind? You tripled it, and it turned out that he was totally right, deserves all the credit, nailed it because he was... I'll never forget my first meeting ever with him. It was, Hey, you've been on the air a bunch of years. Finally, probably worth getting to know you for 60 minutes. Then he laid out his philosophy of live rights and all these things. I just remember going, Okay, I'll never look at this the same way because this guy spent this much time explaining this sh*t to me. Now I get... You never knew with Skipper, it's like, Does he want me as one of the people that's on the air at the time, all like, get ESPN? Does he want me hearing his side of it so that then I leave that meeting going, You know who's a genius? Is this John Skipper? Have you met him? Really know the sports rights. Yeah, right. I always thought there was a little bit of that in there, but clearly, his call was the right call long term on the rights part of it.
[00:32:15]
But there's also all of the ESPN programming that needs to be filled to be in the relationships with it. Then there's also different weird stuff with SportsCenter that I never knew about, that when you have the rights, then that means you can also show the replays in a way where the NFL had some It's like if you're not in business with them, then it limits all these other things you can do with repurposing any of the broadcast stuff. So the reason I'm even setting this up, and I'm going to need another second here. I remember the nets were being purchased. Bruce Ratner was doing the big real estate deal, and it may even been a Grantland piece. It was one of those awesome long form pieces. I think that's where I read it.
[00:32:52]
Oh, remember those?
[00:32:53]
Yeah, they were awesome. Ratner said something I'm sure other owners hated because he was basically putting this undetermined number of value on what a franchise was. We can come up with what it's worth, money in, money out, but this is a painting. This is something I can say that I own, and I'm one of the few people in the world that has one of these things. And it's the worst argument ever for ownership when it comes to CBA stuff with players. And the reason I try to set these two things up here, which I'm taking too long doing, is that I don't know where the numbers can keep going, but clearly there's something where it's worth beyond what it is for just the money in, money out of what you're selling the commercials for on these broadcasts. That if you're not in business with one of them, then you're not really serious, that you're not a real station, that you don't have Pat Summerall giving you a promo, a house of bugging as you're coming back from commercial right before a kickoff after a shutdown. That there have to be all these other baked in values that the TV people understand as the numbers continue to go up in a way that no one can ever shoot too high of a projection for.
[00:34:03]
You hear that, right?
[00:34:04]
I completely agree. Thank you for the house of bugging. All new. Fox 8:30.
[00:34:09]
And then Malcolm in the middle.
[00:34:13]
No, but I think you're right. And look, David Zaslow, the guy running Warner Brothers Discovery, was sitting courtside with the Knicks for all those games. So surely he, of all people, should realize that there is something about being in business with the NBA. I think the question that's interesting there is, and it goes back to what you said about Skipper, did we think the NBA was necessarily on this tier? That is something I feel that's happened. You, all three of us probably heard rumors throughout this process with the NBA media rights that this number was going to come in much lower than it's actually going to come in at.
[00:34:48]
That maybe the interest- I never believe it.
[00:34:49]
Bill was out, but maybe this number wouldn't be three times over seven billion a year. It wouldn't quite get to that moment. I don't know.
[00:34:57]
Look, just to jump in, though, when When the guys started selling their teams, I was like, Wait, what's happening here? The Cuban thing? It was odd that the TV rumors that were coming out, and I don't know if it was a Boris thing, where they throw out such an absurd number that when you pay a few billion, you feel like you're actually getting a deal based on the earliest projections of what the rights were going to cost. But then when you had multiple teams going through turnover, and then rumors of a couple other ones that we keep hearing about being local, younger or older owners, local, they're going to have to sell out. The money is too much now. I was starting to believe that the number was going to come in a number that was really disappointing, and that obviously didn't happen. So keep going, Brian.
[00:35:39]
No, no. And I just think the NFL was always in that, we want to be in... This is our painting. We want to be in business with these guys It always has value. The NBA was another tier lower, right? But now you look at these numbers and it's Amazon wants to be in that business. So who doesn't want to be in that business?
[00:35:56]
Yeah, the biggest thing, you brought up Skipper 10 years There were less suiters 10 years ago, right? It was always going to be ESPN and TNT. There was no renegade third person that was going to come in over the top rope. There were some thoughts, maybe FS1, maybe Fox. Yeah, Fox. It was around. Nbc wasn't in there because they had just spent a sh*tload on football. You always knew where it was going with the two. This time around was different because you had way more suiters, and Apple never even got involved, which I think was a surprise, even to a lot of people that were at Apple. I think Apple thought the MLS and some of the other stuff they were on the sports side was a gateway to them getting in hard on the NBA. But I think the big thing that I think Warner missed on, because I'm not positive they wanted to lose the NBA. I think they're struggling for money big time. I don't think they saw the NBC thing coming. I think John Aarand has a theory in this that I think he's right. The Brian Roberts, the guy who runs Comcast, There was always a feeling with him that he's the guy in your fantasy draft.
[00:37:03]
Matt Bell and I talked about this on his part, that he's the guy in your fantasy draft who drives up the prices on the receiver. He's like, 51 for Jamar Chase. We're like, f*ck, 52. Then he backss out and All of a sudden, you have Jamar Chase at 52. You're like, f*ck, he did it to me again. I should have known. I think they felt like MBC wasn't a serious shooter for it. It turns out they were, and they just missed it. Mbc was willing to go. Everyone knew Amazon coming in. Everyone knew ESP wanted to keep it. So you have three partners, not two, they were able to split the games and the packages and all this sh*t up so that they end up getting to that seven billion figure. To me, this is why they waited on expansion, because I think deep down they knew this was sitting there. I think the owners were like, If we're going to expand, you got to wait till after the media deal, because then we'll actually know what we're splitting up. But to me, it's just a miscalculation by Zaslow. I don't think he saw the the NBC thing coming.
[00:38:00]
I think he saw Amazon. I don't think he saw NBC. There's a flip side, though, Brian, where maybe he wanted to lose it all on.
[00:38:08]
Maybe.
[00:38:08]
It was a lot of money. What Racilla is laying out about it's a little bit of a vanity purchase. Basically, you're hoping to break even, but it lifts up all these other parts of what you're doing. If you're trying to cut costs left and right, maybe you don't need a vanity purchase, right?
[00:38:26]
By the way, it's a ton of money. I don't pretend to be an expert in every part of corporate finance, but you're paying 2.5 billion or more for the old Turner package, which is not as good as Turner's old package.
[00:38:39]
It's a worse package. Plus, it's all that money, plus all the production stuff, plus the salary It's very bad. That works for you. And the ratings. It's more than money.
[00:38:47]
Which is hilarious because I've thought about this where, okay, ratings are down. It's hard to package the ratings in a way where you don't see some decline. It's just a matter of how extreme you want believe the decline is there or how much you would say, well, with new technology and all this stuff, you can't look at these numbers anymore. Okay, well, it appears that the buyers weren't as concerned about those numbers, or maybe it just gets back to the live audience argument where it's like the traditional number can be down, but if the percentage of the audience continues to go up based on other options, then it's still just as valuable. This isn't a great analogy, but the worst town still has to have the best house. And with this, you can say, well, where Where were your ratings five 10 years ago? It's like, okay, but that's actually irrelevant because there isn't something else that provides this much inventory that still is going to have these moments, which I also think was a big part of Silver wanting to model some of the stuff for more event moments. And that's why I think college basketball has just basically waived the flag and gone, we at least have our moment that matters for three weeks.
[00:39:57]
Baseball postseason. Baseball postseason has been an incredible product now for a bunch of years, except for the one year where half the teams get in. But the baseball postseason is still one of my favorite things, but that might be their NCAA tournament through all the other inventory that you're sifting through going, this is just never... There's not going to be a world where it exists that this is as important as it used to be.
[00:40:21]
Well, and that baseball package is coming up down the road where it's the regular season versus the playoffs. At least with basketball, you can throw stars in the commercial shows and be like, Today, Anthony Edwards against Luka Donchik, Friday night here on Amazon or whatever. Baseball, you can't really do it. You just can't. Okay.
[00:40:39]
I want to stay on the splitting this part up because once you got done going through the NFL part of it, I'm like, What? Where? How many of you have canceled your Peaco*cks? So I'm sitting there going, they are chopping it up and taking it to the street. Now, does that mean that the product is Is weaker? Is this potentially a bad long term plan to have everybody confused where the most valuable product in live television is? Or is it just, well, we'll worry about that on the next one because if this many different people want to pay us a combined total that outweighs just being partnered up with just two providers. I think the NFL and clearly the NBA, that seems to be the league model right now. And I'm always wondering five years from now, if some team or league goes more so the league than any specific team. It's like, that was stupid. The product was all over the place.
[00:41:37]
Well, don't you think, Brian, don't you feel like a piece of this is going to be the two league cable channels, the NFL Network and NBA TV? Basically, taking the games that were on those because they established those channels to try to get the rights fees. But eventually, those channels are going to become ghost ships, like what happened in ESPN Classic in the 2000s. You take the games that were on those channels and you start selling them off as one-offs or five-offs or whatever, and you just make way more money that way. I feel like that's what's going to happen. You disagree?
[00:42:07]
No, I think that's part of it. And to Ryan, the flip side of Ryan's point is if you chop it up more ways, you get more people promoting the NBA. So all of a sudden, you have Amazon promoting the NBA. We know you will take either Amazon or Netflix or hopefully both. The NFL has gotten both. Nba is working on it, right? They get their in with Amazon. You get NBC, which gets a bunch of your games off cable, which has been a big deal. You can go find the quotes from David Stern 20 years ago going, We need to put our games on cable because cable is the future. We need to get them off broadcast. We've now come all the way back around. We're taking them off cable and putting them on broadcast. But I do think there is a little bit of an NFL issue here, right? I mean, the NFL carved it up as much as humanly possible, and then it's like, Whoa, look at all these jet games. Look at all these Russell Wilson games. This sucks. These aren't great nights, and there will be nights like that in the NBA for sure under the new agreement.
[00:42:57]
Well, and there's a bigger piece, but We're going to talk about the schedule, but let's take one more break. All right, so we're talking about this big NBA package. I thought a piece of this because they're getting so much more money than I think all of us To get to seven plus billion for these packages is pretty nuts. I was thinking, this sounds like the perfect time to cut back now to '72 games' or '76 games', something like that. The NBA is like, No, it's still going to be '82. Nfl, same thing. Oh, you're making way more money on these one-off games. Sounds like the perfect time maybe to drop the '18 games' thing, right? Because that'll be terrible. Player safety. Nobody, literally, nobody wants it. All of us love football. Nobody wants an '18 games' schedule, they're going to do it. I don't know where any of this ends because you could tell me, is it more realistic for the NBA to add regular season games or lose them? And I got to say, I could see them going when they have the two expansion teams going to like 86 games instead of 82 versus going backwards the other way.
[00:44:06]
These guys, they're just addicted to the cash and the money and how much they can make from it. It's never about what's good for the league. Rizelda, the 18-game NFL schedule, is there a bigger money grab you've ever heard of?
[00:44:21]
Well, no. I'm not surprised by any of this stuff. The baseball argument I always hear was like, Okay, so you don't watch baseball now because the season's too long. So if they cut it to 140 or 132, you're going to start watching. Of course, you're not. You've already decided you're out of it. If I'm a baseball owner, I'd be like, Stop bringing it up. You like parking revenue. We're going to 200 games. Yeah, we're selling hot dogs. Shirts are 60 bucks now in the stadium. So guess what? And we're providing jobs. So it's not happening. Stop asking. The basketball fascination with a shorter season from all the basketball writers is like, Find a new f*cking topic.
[00:45:00]
It's not happening. I include myself. It's not going to happen.
[00:45:03]
It's never happening. There's basketball people that I've talked to. I agree with your premise, Bill. I think the '72 game' thing, I've seen it all mapped out. Hey, great idea. It's not happening. This is not going in that direction every single decision. I don't know. Everybody who works the high level of corporate America. How would you do in a meeting? It's like, okay, what are we planning on doing? Let's lay out the game plan for this year. Hey, let's not make every dollar available to Let's cut back because of just vibes. Let's not try to make every last single dollar for shareholders and the people that have invested in this company. So the only difference is this all plays out publicly. There's a different emotional attachment to it. But the NFL owners with their track record of the last 10 years, they make the NBA owners seem like the Peace Corps. There's nothing the NFL owners can do anymore that would ever surprise me about how much available available cash they're going to go after. And the consumer, as we talked about with your decisions with what you do and what you click on and the different shows and segments that you guiltily watch, I think it's the same thing with football.
[00:46:14]
They're like, We'd rather go too far with this and realize when we've made the mistake than potentially leave anything on the table. And that's what I think the NFL does with the way they operate.
[00:46:24]
What do you think, Brian?
[00:46:25]
It's what everybody does. We decided in my lifetime that 60, 14 teams was not enough to crown a college basketball champion. Oh my God. Sixty-four wasn't enough.
[00:46:37]
We haven't even talked about college football. When you think about what college football has done to their sport in such a massive amount of times, it looks like the NFL is stuck in the '50s.
[00:46:46]
Yeah. Oh, I know. College football play is going to be a month long this year.
[00:46:49]
I talked to a guy last night. He's like, I played at Cal. He's like, We're in the ACC. He's like, I forgot again. I forgot twice that we're in the ACC.
[00:46:57]
Everything grows. I mean, we created this- Wait a second.
[00:46:59]
Cal's in the ACC?
[00:47:01]
Yeah.
[00:47:01]
Breaking news for Bill.
[00:47:03]
Jesus. This is why I feel great about not following college sports. Yeah, I guess if you're comparing a beer in a phone to college sports, you're feeling great. He's doing 100 It's better. What happens to college sports? Do we just end up with 32 major programs and that's it?
[00:47:24]
Well, I think we're going to have it- Everybody else is div 3? Right. It'll go to some extreme where I mean, you think the NFL owners, you have school presidents with no governing body just deciding to do whatever they want to do, and they get on the phone, and then all of a sudden, you have Cal and the ACC because of all these other dominoes that have fallen. But I don't care how outdated I sound. I don't care how old I sound. I think there is a line which you could pass in the structure of some of these decisions that are made where you're like, Hey, we went too far. It's like the Tebo coverage at ESPN. They were like, We can't get enough It does numbers. The data backs it up. Tebo, tebo, tebo. And I was like, I think everybody's f*cking sick of this Tebo topic. I think people are pretty sick of it. They're like, No, keep doing it. And the play there was, We will do it until we've made a mistake doing it too much instead of not doing it enough, which is basically what I just said about the money part of it.
[00:48:19]
So when I look at college football, I don't think they give a sh*t about any of it anymore. And there may be this Super League, and then I'd like to think there'll be some correction 10 years after that happens. I was like, You know what was fun? Where geographically and culturally, it felt like there was 10 to 12 schools that all matched what it was like to be from that part of the country. I missed that. That's what I loved about college football, and that's what I hate about what's happening.
[00:48:43]
Curtis is sad. Curtis loves college football. What conference is Texas in? Are you in the Patriot League now?
[00:48:49]
I will say I'm sad, but on the other hand, I looked at Texas schedule the other day. I was like, Wow, we're playing Georgia this year? Playing Florida? We got two of our old rivals back, Arkansas and A&M. We're playing at Michigan at the beginning of the season. I'm like, that sounds like the Super League is here. I totally cosign everything Ryan just said, but also I'm looking forward to all those games. It's going to be awesome.
[00:49:11]
Can we talk about inside the NBA?
[00:49:13]
Yes.
[00:49:14]
I really want to talk about this. You just wrote about this. You wrote about Barkley and the theory of people who publicly negotiate their contracts, which is a new trend that we're seeing, which I'm surprised people are interested in. Barkley seems pissed off more than anything. I think he was led to believe that they were keeping it. Now he's looking at all these people and he's talked about it. He's looking at all these people he's worked with for the last two decades. I just think he felt like this was going to be a situation. I'm just going to keep going, going, going. Now all of a sudden, this person he barely knows is taking basketball away. What happens to this show going forward? What happens to Barkley? Does it stay together? What are your instincts?
[00:49:58]
So he was going to going, going, going, except every three or four years, he would say, I'm going to retire. And then Turner would come by and be like, Here is a huge new contract not to retire. So please don't retire. So he's going to do that. But it's funny to me because I think we all love Inside so much, and I'm one of these people, that we think the only way these TV friends would ever break up is if some asshole executive breaks them up. That's the only way. If you actually listen to what Charles Barkley says and has done going back to two years ago when he shopped himself to LiveGolf and to possibly leave Turner. We all memory hold that one, right? It's like, if LiveGolf gets me a huge pay to have, I'm just going to have to go. And That's just the way it is. If you listen to what he says, his whole thing has been like, I want to make a great deal for myself. And by the way, I don't begrudge him that at all. He is great at what he does. He is the biggest star on that program.
[00:50:58]
He has more worth and more leverage than everybody on that program combined. So he can go make the big deal he wants. So to me, the question about inside going forward is, what is Charles Barkley's interest in keeping the band together? He's the guy that's going to... It's not going to be Amazon saying, Hey, we want everybody. It's going to be Amazon or somebody going to Charles Barkley and say, What's important to you? Is it what's important to you that you get the absolute best deal, or is it important to you that we bring everybody with you, that that's what you want? And to me, he holds this whole thing in his hands because he's that big of a star.
[00:51:35]
Well, the one thing that seems pretty certain is that Ernie is going to retire with Turner because he's been there forever, and he's He's at a later stage of his career and he's under contract with them. He's doing other stuff with them, and it seems like it's a super important thing for him. But I also wouldn't be surprised by anything. It also might be a good career move for Barkley to branch out and be with a different group of people. What's the difference between 23 years, 17 years, 12? Once you get past 10, 12 years of everybody together, maybe it is an interesting career thing for him. On the other hand, he just tried a career move with that Gael King Show, and that thing lasted 10 weeks. Sometimes when you're a part of something special, maybe you try to keep that. How do you see plan out, Racela?
[00:52:25]
Well, everybody knows he's my favorite athlete of all time, and probably One of the coolest things is getting to know him over the years and having him on. But when I had him on, I think it was just a year ago when I was in Chicago for the Combine. I think it was a year ago, it could have been two years ago. He was basically telling me he wasn't going to do this much longer. And Curtis lays it out perfectly, the timeline in this piece that's up on the Ringer now. And I would say the lesson that I think is the most correct lesson I've ever learned in this business is if you're younger and there's an older guy that's on the air and a manager says, Hey, that guy's probably not going to resign after this year. He's going to call it quits. It's the most untrue thing in any profession. That guy never goes anywhere. He just keeps resigning because think about his life. Hey, do you want to make another 20 million next year working? Granted, he works more than one day a week when you factor in all the incidental level of the tournament stuff that they do.
[00:53:21]
But I'm always fascinated by Barkley. I have a Barkley theory that if you're just yourself long enough, once you get through the rough patches, then everybody catches up to you, and then you no longer have to be anybody else. You don't have to worry about what you say. If you say things that rub people the wrong way long enough and you haven't lost your job on the air, you can then just survive forever.
[00:53:43]
That's a Howard Stern theory. Yeah, Howard Stern. You pass a point where you just get to say whatever you want. It's okay.
[00:53:50]
Him saying before the Western Conference final, I was like, I haven't been in Minneapolis in 20 years. They're like, Dude, you're here. Curtis puts it in. Curtis, speak for your column because I don't want to quote it.
[00:54:00]
He was there five years ago, and his alma mater, Auburn, was playing in the final four. So it seems not like a thing you would forget.
[00:54:09]
He must not have a great weekend.
[00:54:10]
People love Barclays. Nobody's going to call him out.
[00:54:13]
No, and it doesn't matter. That's the whole thing.
[00:54:16]
All right, but here's, I think this is a good connection to what we've been talking about with every last dollar and where do the TV rights keep going and all this stuff. We've seen massive single contracts for people, whether it's the Akeman Buck deal, the braided deal, like new levels, where when you thought you were making a couple million bucks for one of these jobs, you're like, I'm killing it and I'm having a great life. I think the peak content people have completely reset the market at the higher ends. Where does this keep going? Do you ever hear? Do you ever have anybody in your world that talks to you off the record? I don't even know if you can share this with us, where it's the person's becoming the vanity higher, where you may not even be able to figure out how to recoup all of that money. Is there a number where Barkley isn't actually worth it?
[00:55:10]
Yeah, I mean, I think I hear that from people in the business all the time, especially from a person that's the executive, but not the executive running the place. Clearly at ESPN, like Jimmy Pitaro has decided, this is the strategy. There were clearly people, let us say, the executive level at ESPN were like, oh, Is that the strategy? Is this where we really going in on one, two, three, four here? Is that it? So yeah, all the time. And look, if ESPN were to hire Barkley and put him on the pregame show, you're really going to have $40 million a year in salaries on the NBA pregame show because Steven is not going anywhere.
[00:55:45]
Especially a show that they've proven they don't really care about because they have two-minute segments. I would say to Pitaro, let them be on the air for a little while. You're going to hire them, have them.
[00:55:58]
The greatness of the TNT Studio show, and by the way, I don't even know what the ratings are. Everybody raves about it. What are the actual ratings? But they come back and they give them the freedom to actually have real f*cking conversations. There's a looseness to that, a lack of structure, because you can't have structure with those guys. Those guys would revolt against structure. And then I see these shows try to do it. It's like, what are you doing? You're not allowing your on-air people to even have the same taste of real estate as these guys.
[00:56:26]
When I was doing the studio show, that was always what I was talking to Curtis about. I was like, this finally makes sense to me. We're coming at a halftime in a game seven of some series final, and you have two and a half minutes to talk. You were saying this on ESPN, they had Chris Paul there. They had five people at a halftime show, and it was like 2 hours or 2 minutes and 10 seconds. And Steven A was one of the people. So you know he's going to go for at least a minute, and then they got to wear Chris Paul in. So you might as well take the other two. Poor Bob Myers. I don't know if his usage rate was Too high. I look back, I wrote about Inside the NBA in spring of 2002 for Page 2. It was the first year I was at Page 2, and I went down to Atlanta and I did a two-part piece about it, talking about how it was the greatest sports studio show of all time. That was the premise of the piece because it was like, finally, there's a show that's for us.
[00:57:25]
Finally, there's an unpredictable show that gets the conversation piece. But I think When people talk about what's going to happen in this show, you don't really hear a lot of dialog about the history of how bad these shows were and what we grew up with in the '70s and the '80s. Even the most famous show was Brett Musberger and Phyllis George and I mean, the Greek. Go back and watch that show on YouTube. It is absolutely brutal television. It's brutal. But it was great. We loved it. But you go through and how many ESPN Studio shows have there been? How How many countdowns has there been? There's been like 20. How many different football shows have we had year after year? And even the Fox show with all those guys, that's like a karaoke show of the show that was pretty good 15 years ago. And inside the NBA has been able to just levitate above it. We've always been able to point to it and say, Oh, this is the one. Thank God for this show. At least we have this show. This is the show that's figured it out. I think Barkley is what?
[00:58:25]
85% of it because he's the best TV talent we've ever had in sports. Wherever he goes, when you talk to Roussel about the shiny new toy thing, and is that worth it? What's the price? It is worth it if you're MBC. It is worth it if you're Amazon because you have Barkley. You have this face you can put everywhere. You can trot out It is like buying the biggest, shiniest yacht in St. Bart's. I don't even know what he's going to get, but it's going to be some nuts number, I think. Because you get the legacy of... You still basically get in the inside the NBA because of him, right? Anyway, Rizel, any more on this?
[00:59:05]
No, I was trying to find inside the NBA ratings, and they're all over the place because it's the number right after the game is done.
[00:59:15]
It's tied to the game. Yeah, it's tied to the game.
[00:59:16]
Right. Curtis, you have something on that?
[00:59:18]
Well, I was just going to say to Ryan's point earlier about the looseness. To me, the biggest thing if it moves somewhere else is it's got to go into the night. That's a huge part of inside the NBA. Is that going to work on ESPN when they have to get to something else It's not going to work on an NBC if they have to go to like- Jimmy Fallon, we got to go. Local news. So really, to me- Yeah, they're tossing a charm.
[00:59:39]
They would have to do it on Peaco*ck, right? It would be like, Coming up next on Peaco*ck. It's just different. Once you're making viewers work for any piece of what they're watching.
[00:59:48]
I don't like that.
[00:59:49]
That's why it probably makes the most sense.
[00:59:52]
This is where the Bark me number, you can't put a cap on it because if there's one thing we've learned about content the last, I don't even think it's five years long. I think it's like a three to four year thing where the decision makers are like, All right, this person guarantees me an audience? Done. I don't, whatever. I think Clearly, Barkley is on that short list. It's not the play by play because the play by play color number is very clear that ESPN was sick of not being able to figure it out. Then finally, they're like, We'll just fix it with money and grab, arguably, the best team. Then Fox finds a way to... I mean, you want to talk about salvaging things for a team that were losing all of its free agents. It's like, actually, you just drafted two future Hall of Famers, and Olson and Burkhardt, and then the Olson part of it, that's really weird. But Fox came out about as well as you could ever imagine post-losing Buck and Akemen. But I'm talking like non... Because I've never really quite understood. People bitch about the wrong play-by-play in color.
[01:00:56]
People would, I don't know that the ratings go up because you have the right broadcast team. I don't know that I would ever believe that.
[01:01:02]
No, the ratings are the same no matter who's announcing the f*cking game. We've been saying that forever. It's just a fact.
[01:01:08]
Barkley is on a really short list of people that I think would get people to go, Well, what are they doing? If it's something new, that number is astronomical. It's massive.
[01:01:21]
Can I make the case for Kenny Smith quickly? No. I actually think he's become underrated, and I think he's a big... I like him and Barkley together. If it was just Barkley moving on his own and saying goodbye to everybody else, and it's like, Barkley is going to be a new team, I would really miss what he had with Kenny because I thought they really complemented each other. I thought they were getting a real argument on the air that were good nature, no He was respectful. I thought he brought a different level of thinking to it. That would make me the saddest. Shaq, I like Shaq personally. I think the show would be fine with or without Shaq. You'd probably miss some of the comedy, but the Barkley-Kennie piece, I don't know. Maybe what would be weird is if Barkley went to one channel and Kenny went to another one and Kenny and Shaq got split up. I think that would be strange, too.
[01:02:10]
But it does feel- You're right about the Kenny part being the foil to Barkley. I think Shaq from the beginning to where he's at now is a massive improvement.
[01:02:20]
No, it's like a borderline miracle.
[01:02:22]
He was so bad in that first year. I was like, Why are you guys doing this? You already have what everybody considers the best show. Why would you do this? I I think it's worked because he and Chuck have a different dynamic that's totally different than the Kenny and Chuck dynamic. So that's one of those rare cases where it worked out. And my issue with Jeremon on it, we talked about last week, and then got picked up everywhere. Trust me, as a young guy that was insecure about being on the air, and I'm surrounded by all these other stars and all these other big names and all the stuff that I was going through at the beginning of my career, I didn't want to be made fun of. I always wanted to be the cool guy. And what you learn is you can't be the f*cking cool guy every single segment. You have to be a little vulnerable. You have to make fun of yourself. You have to be self-deprecating. And Draymond doesn't have any of those beats yet. He doesn't understand any of it. He's also, I would argue, one of the more delusional people that we have, commenting on himself.
[01:03:15]
In sports today. So it wasn't even fair. He wasn't ready to even sit there. But then he had to learn how to like, Hey, man, you have to... Chuck makes fun of himself all the time. Shaq learned, Hey, I'm going to make fun of himself. Kenny he's going to be made fun of because he's Kenny Smith sitting next to Shaq and Charles Barkley. And then Ernie has to be the rare anchor. If you ever replaced Ernie, can you imagine how mad the new anchor would be and be like, Hey, wait, you're just going to talk over me the whole time, blow up my clock? I've got somebody in my ear and I've got to toss, and now you're talking over me. You have no respect for me. Professionally, that's part of the joke because they never have any respect for Ernie doing all the mechanics of driving a show. So to learn to do that on the fly immediately for a younger person in that role, that person would lose their mind. You're like, Wait, this is what I have to do the whole time? So I'd hate to see it broken up. I just think the Barkley, Hey, we've got Barkley.
[01:04:09]
You roll them out to the upfronts. You're playing at Augusta with them with a couple of vice presidents and programming. That there's this other baked-in vanity value, the word you used earlier, that happens with him, that doesn't happen with many other people in the business.
[01:04:23]
No, it's like a Letterman's going to CBS type of situation. You're getting the show, but you're also getting this personality that now you get to put at the forefront of all these different things you're doing. You could argue that maybe TNT/HBO/Warner didn't leverage that quite enough. The Draymonde thing is interesting, though, Curtis, because On the one hand, I didn't think he was good on the show. I thought he was just too mean-spirited, and I just thought his usage rate was higher than it needed to be, considering he's walking on the show that's the best sports studio show of all time. But he's a young announcement. I'm sure he'd be better years ago. The bigger issue to me is they just didn't need a fifth person. There was no reason to do it. That was the part when we talked, when anyone who was critical of it, it more stemmed from why, which goes Back to our initial conversation, why? Why do you have to tinker with this? When I look at Amazon and MBC as they put together their shows, I guess their thoughts are going to be more as more. Amazon did an NFL show.
[01:05:28]
They had five people on it.
[01:05:29]
Yeah.
[01:05:29]
Why do you have five people on it? Why don't you have four and then rotate in a fifth person depending on what your specialty is? But I just know how this works. We're just in the more and more. How many people are on the MBC Sunday Night Show? Was that nine? Let's go in the field to Jack Collins's than Rodney Harrison.
[01:05:45]
Wait, what? I don't know what the peak number. That was a cap violation. There was a time where I think Dan and Oberman were on it.
[01:05:54]
Yeah, they had two studio hosts. And Costas. They were all three on, I'm pretty sure, at the same time.
[01:06:00]
Yeah.
[01:06:01]
That would be an awesome piece is to go back and just try to figure out how they actually split up the minutes with that. I mean, maybe it's a terrible piece, so I'm not trying to give you an awful assignment. But I remember at one point, because Bill's always really good in this, when it was the women's final four, it's like, Oh, we got a six-man desk or six-woman desk. That's what I should say. Look out, hide the kids. Nbc, Sunday Night Football at its peak pushed the limits that man has never attempted to push since because it was just, What the f*ck are we doing?
[01:06:29]
Yeah, we're going to different sets. We're going on the field. We're back over here. Cbs, when they were trying to wear JJ Watt in there, but they didn't want to get rid of Phil Sims, they were doing six at halftimes for the early game. Six is just incredible to me because there's always five people who just are never talking. I don't know if we're ever going to figure this out ever, Curtis. You've been writing about this ever since I've known you, and it feels like everyone's getting worse at it.
[01:06:57]
I had somebody from the network tell me one time, We produce TV for ourselves rather than producing TV for people at home. That note has always stuck with me. As a producer, that sounds like a cool idea. I remember the last time, as long as we're doing random '90s references here, I think it was the last year, CBS had the NFL before they lost it. It was just Greg Gumbel and Terry Bradshaw in the studio. Maybe Pat O'Brien and Leslie Bisser were somewhere around, but it was a two-man show. It was good. It was fine.
[01:07:28]
It was totally- You know, MBC did this with It was Kostis and Pat Reilly was the years between the coach. Showtime. Before he coached the next. It was one year. You can go back and watch some of those on YouTube, and they're like, It's legit good. It's like, whoa. Almost like a podcast. I do wonder, Marcelo- Okay, but wait.
[01:07:46]
Stay on this because now I'm thinking in my head, the Rolodex of things that I love. Like, Baseball Tonight, peak Baseball Tonight in the '90s. I'm like, That's the studio show. That's the thing. It's like your college girlfriend is over. She's like, Do you want to have sex? You're like, No. Gammon's diamond notes are coming up next. I can't do this. But then I also think about the NBC weekend NBA package, and it's like, oh, wait, we're going to have Peter Vesey come out the side door and just blow towards somebody right now? This is awesome. Wait, I can't go anywhere. Peter Vesey is coming up, and it's like the old Vegas line, where when my friends complain about Vegas saying that place sucks now, it's like, no, you're 30 years older than the first time that you went there. So you're It's not that Vegas, Vegas has some changes, and surely it evolves, but you're a lot different now than Vegas is. So are we sitting here complaining about these shows that it's really about us being a lot different, where we were so easily appeased with this stuff? I'm like, Wait, Ravage has got the 10-inning game against the Blue Jays?
[01:08:49]
I already watched the game. I want to see the highlights again. I want to see Rob Nen strike out the side. Maybe we just all change, and studios keep trying to fix these shows in a way that we don't care about anymore.
[01:09:05]
I'm still laughing at the Gammon's Diamond Notes thing. That's really funny.
[01:09:10]
I absolutely love Diamond Notes.
[01:09:11]
No, because you know why? f*cking Diamond Notes. I loved it.
[01:09:15]
I don't know what I was- I'd be like, damn, it's make up sh*t. I don't even care. Yeah.
[01:09:19]
But here's the big point of all this. And it goes- Derek Barton?
[01:09:23]
What?
[01:09:23]
It connects inside the MBA everything. If you have four, five, six people on the studio show, you have to script things. You can't have a real conversation anymore. Everything becomes scripted. That was the case twelve years ago. Yeah. By the way, the more people on it, the more you script, and then all of a sudden it dies. It's not real conversation, and it sucks. That is the point.
[01:09:45]
Can I respond to the Ursula point? Sure. Technically, sometimes I think you're right, where we value this stuff because when we cared the most, it was the way they did it, so I'm always going to defend it. I just think the studio were way more important than the '90s because we had less sports. Some cities didn't even have 24/7 sports radio stations at that point. We didn't have the internet yet. We didn't have podcasts to listen to. I just remember the '80s were even worse, but I remember just being so starved for any info or conversation about things I cared about in sports that I would listen, drive around in the '90s, listen to EI, and I f*cking hated EI. I literally didn't like one of the shows or one of the hosts. And that's what I was listening to driving around because it was like, oh, at least they're talking about sports. I have other people in my life. So when I would watch like, baseball tonight or like, Riley with Kostas, it was really meaningful. It was like, this It was a half hour of sports that I'm just not getting enough of.
[01:10:49]
It goes back to when we did the National, it was the first piece we did for Grantland, about the National trying to be this all sports newspaper. Like, how meaningful that was to all of us because it was like, holy sh*t. Somebody's going to write about sports for 40 pages every day? This is amazing. Now it's like, you can get anything you want. I don't know where sports studio shows fit in there in the same way, which is what was so special about the Barkley thing, because you still like, the game would end and I always wanted to hear what he thought afterwards. That's a really rare... That's the rarest thing you have. First take has some of that now with Steven A. I can't wait to watch Steven A the next morning. It's 07:00 AM PT. Hear what he said about the Cowboys. The shows that have succeeded and thrived, I think, have hit that the best. It's like, this happened, what do you think? Which we've tried to replicate with our pods, too, I think.
[01:11:39]
We've already talked about, though, the ESPN show. The ESPN show should be better. It just should be better. But Steven A is going to do the Steven A role. Malika is a star, but she's the anchor, so she's still going to figure out a way to defer because the job when you host is to defer. And Perk is feeling himself, but you never quite know. If he were tweeting during the Revolutionary War, it would depend on the battle. They're like, Hey, this is a home game. Those boys got pride. And then you'd have the deal going on in Long Island, and it'd just be like the Hestians are in the mix. There ain't no way George can get this done.
[01:12:15]
Paul Revere's got to step up.
[01:12:16]
George was a stat. He's a compiled. No real battles, no rings.
[01:12:22]
Can this be a segment? Perk, right? Perk, close down in random Revolutionary Wars. Right.
[01:12:28]
Then the French would get involved and be like, best, the George and the Americans want the trade deadline. They added the French Navy, so ain't no way. So it just... That show, I know it's not for me, and we've said this numerous times. So I'm arguing my own point of our standards in the '90s versus our standards today. And I agree with you, Bill. We just cared about it then because we didn't have that much content to get through. I never know what that show every year, but they're also not allowed to have even close to the amount of real estate that TNT has. So it's not even... Sometimes I don't even feel it's fair to be critical. When they come back from halftime, you can get mad about what it is at halftime, but you just go, what's the... You can't get mad about this.
[01:13:16]
The best way I would describe it is the way that how short the segments are. It would be like if they were being asked to play basketball without a three-point line and TNT got a three-point line. And shoes. That's the difference. I want to say one thing about Malika because I've noticed this. I don't know if you haven't done TV, it's really hard to explain how hard this is. They do this thing where she sits with Woj, and then she gets up, and they keep the camera rolling, and she leads into the next segment walking from the Woj set to where the other guys are and keeps going, keeps going, sits down, and then they kickstart another segment. It's just really impressive. It's like the Goodfellas long shot. You guys are- You know what I'm talking about?
[01:13:56]
No, I know exactly, but you can't just use the jib on the open.
[01:13:58]
That's so f*cking hard to do that. Yeah.
[01:14:00]
What? I'm with you. Look, Curtis knows this. You know what people love more than a set? A side set. Look at Get Up. Get Up has nooks and crannies all over the place.
[01:14:11]
The nooks and crannies are big. Curtis loves nooks and crannies.
[01:14:13]
A little couch where your knees are almost touching the guest.
[01:14:17]
Do you have nooks and crannies in your pod set up, Curtis? Oh, yeah. Can you just move over to where Jack Collinsworth and Rodney Harrison are?
[01:14:24]
I should do that. We should have done the last 30 minutes in the little kitchenette over there. That would have been cool.
[01:14:28]
Mike and Mike had I experimented with a side little deal where it was a couple chairs for a longer form interview. That was weird, but the chair angle was brutal because it just led to an absolute dick bulge in Chinos. That was just right in your face. There was nothing. It was like performance-enhancing camera shot. I remember the first time I filled in in the side set and I sat into it. I was like, Whoa, dude. You need to put up a parental warning? Some guys He's got his headset on. He's like, We got bad chairs, man. We got bad chairs. We're trying to work through it.
[01:15:06]
Chairs are really important. The dick bulge set. Did they get rid of the dick bulge set?
[01:15:10]
Yeah, because there was no desk. You were just out there in the open and the angle and the cinching of the pants and the entire thing. But, sex sells.
[01:15:23]
Curtis, anything else?
[01:15:25]
I always get unnerved when I see a sportscaster without a desk. I really do.
[01:15:29]
I don't like it.
[01:15:31]
Sportscasting is a...
[01:15:32]
I don't like it for talk shows or anything. Anytime it's just the legs, it just feels... I don't know, I feel uneasy.
[01:15:42]
It just feels like a producer said, Now let's stand up. Okay. Thanks.
[01:15:47]
That's so helpful. All right, do we wrap it up?
[01:15:52]
I think we got it.That's it? Yeah.
[01:15:54]
All right. Curtis, what do you got to plug?
[01:15:56]
Pressbox Monday, David Schumacher. And then I don't want to go all pat bev on you guys, but please subscribe to my podcast because Wednesday, if we pull it off, we're going to have a really cool NBA-related podcast. It's going to be really, really fun. I just want to make sure it gets recorded and done and everything. There you go.
[01:16:12]
What's your finalist prediction?
[01:16:14]
Mavs in four. Okay.
[01:16:17]
I love it. So you do your final's prediction on your Tuesday pod?
[01:16:22]
Yeah, or Celts in seven.
[01:16:24]
Oh, you already did it. I'm still sorting mine out. I want to know more KP info. Oh, really?
[01:16:30]
Yeah. Does FanDuel have any line on what I think you're going to pick?
[01:16:36]
I'd probably pick Celts in six right now, but can I see footage of Porzicus practicing? Would be great. A couple of threes, maybe him running up and down the court. It would be nice. Curtis, thanks for coming on. Thanks for joining us. Rusillo, great to see you as always. I'll see you in Boston. Thanks to Steve Cerruti and Kyle Creighton as well. I will see you in this podcast on Tuesday.
[01:16:59]
On the wayside, let alone say I don't have a few years with him.
[01:17:13]
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